Goodbye Next Door Neighbours!

My neighbours of some nine years or so are off to live in Zurich this week. Today has seen manic packing, cleaning and all the other stressful things associated with moving. Obviously, I had to send them a card, so set to last week - no inspiration came! Eventually, I remembered that I had a free stamp from Craft Stamper this month with a strange little pointy castle like house image. I had a look at the designer examples they give for the free stamp and liked the one by Jo Firth Young. I haven't copied it but it was my starting point and, like hers, my strange little houses are in a row (hope she doesn't mind!).

I decided to use colours that aren't in my usual favoured palette and I'm sort of happy with the result. My neighbour has already opened the card and thinks it's fab so I suppose my goal was achieved! Can't help being hyper critical of what I do but aren't we all really?!

The completed card - for once I used printed backing paper which I've had for donkeys years!

I even stamped the envelope so it didn't look too bare!

I stamped some writing first on scrap card , then the house image.I coloured  it with distress inks and added glossy accents after I'd cut out the image. It's lovely and shiny but that doesn't really show here. I did two like this: one for the front and one for inside the card.

I die cut a button shape and coloured it with distress ink. The cotton cord in the button was also coloured with distress.

The inside of my card - sometimes I don't know when to stop I fear!!